Happy Wednesday, my friends. If I was ever caught in an endless Groundhog Day loop, I’d want it to be Saturday, February 29.

It’s not February 29, but today is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not Irish, so I can’t claim that the day is of great importance to me, but it’s become a bit of an American spectacle obsessed with the color green. Green beer, green rivers, green clothing, four-leaf clovers and the Emerald Isle. I don’t hear any cultural Marxists accusing us Normal Americans of Irish cultural appropriation, so I guess St. Patty’s Day isn’t cancelled yet.

For many years I didn’t know that St. Patrick was a real person. If you’ve never read about him, his life is a fascinating example of hardship, forgiveness, love and sacrifice. Here’s part of his story from this account in Baltimore Magazine.

The true story of Maewyn Succat—most likely born in today’s Scotland or Wales—is better than the myth.

Captured by raiders as a 16-year-old in northern Britain, Patrick was taken across the Irish Sea by pirates and sold into slavery. Escaping from six years of bondage after receiving a spiritual vision, Patrick returned to Ireland decades later, armed only with a mystic’s faith, to convert the island to Christianity, abolishing slavery and human sacrifice in the process.

[…]

For the religious-minded, it is Patrick’s spiritual journey, recounted in Confessio, which continues to inspire to this day. He describes himself as a sinner in the opening lines and acknowledges that he was not a good Christian and that he did not know “the true God” when he was kidnapped and forced by his slave master to become a shepherd. He also admits to a grave sin at age 15 (the exact nature remains unknown), but which nearly prevents his religious appointment to Ireland 30 years later.

Enslaved in a land far from home, unfamiliar with Gaelic, without companionship or comfort, Patrick discovers the only hope available to him. He writes in Confessio that he had begun to offer “up to 100 prayers a day, and in the night a like number.” He prayed as he “stayed out in the forest and on the mountain” and before daylight in “the snow, in icy coldness, in rain.”

Then, in his early 20s, while asleep one evening, a voice in a dream tells Patrick that he would soon be departing for his land of origin. Soon afterward, Patrick writes that he heard another voice in another dream say to him, “Behold, your ship is ready.”

Well inland, however—the vessel, which would carry him home was some 200 miles away, he’d later recall—Patrick started to walk the unfamiliar landscape. Fleeing his slave master, he made his way until he reached the ship he’d been told of in his vision. Although an escaped slave, Patrick convinced several members of the crew to stow him away.

It was some years later, after he’d reunited with his family in northern Britain, that Patrick received his calling to become a priest and return to Ireland. With his education already disrupted, Patrick went about mastering Latin and learning Christian theology for years in France before he was ordained a priest and then a bishop.

Around 433 A.D., he returned to Ireland, as this account describes.

“One night, he had a dream. There was a man who came from Ireland with a whole bunch of letters. And he opened up one of the letters and it said ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ And then he heard a voice coming out of this letter that said, ‘Holy boy, please return to us. We need you.'”

Patrick struggled in his soul. Could he return to Ireland and minister to the same people who had enslaved him? Once again, he turned to God in prayer. He received the answer in a dream.

“He talks about how he, in this dream, is trying to pray and yet he can’t,” says Freeman. “So he hears a voice coming from inside of him which he realizes is the voice of God praying for him.”

Patrick knew he had to go and convince his church that he was called to be a missionary to Ireland. He set sail in a small ship.

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In 432 A.D., Patrick built a church on the site of the present day St. Patrick’s Memorial Church in Saul — the first ever Christian church in all of Ireland. It’s considered the cradle of Irish Christianity.

“Preaching the Gospel, of course, baptizing converts, confirming them, appointing clergy,” continues Calvert.

Patrick’s ministry lasted 29 years. He baptized over 120,000 Irishmen and planted 300 churches.

“What Patrick did was really lay the groundwork for Christianity,” says Freeman.

To this day, no one knows where Patrick is buried, but many believe that it is somewhere beneath the church on the hill at Down Cathedral.

Rev. Sean Brady concludes, “He was a man who came to face and help his former enemies who had enslaved him. He came back to help them and to do them a great favor — the greatest favor he possibly could.”

The irony, of course, is that a Christian missionary who brought the love of Christ to Ireland, saving souls while eliminating the scourges of slavery and human sacrifice, is celebrated not by humble thanksgiving, but by leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold and drunken revelry.

Instead of joining the secular celebrations today, maybe we could take a moment and thank God for his grace in bringing the gospel to thousands of souls who would have died without Christ back in the 5th century. Weird idea, right?

But we often grumble about the decay of our culture. Here’s an opportunity to “take back” a day for its original purpose.

Just a thought.